DaViD´82

“I say we should eat the dogs!" And I say... In fact, I don’t know what. A magic cure for a bad mood. Along with “Záskok" (The Stand-In), the best of the genius Jara’s legacy. And let’s make the most of it; another man of his caliber may never be born into this world. “Here I go, walking north...and now I’m walking south!"

Life is a hurricane here in Duckburg... The theme tune that was a guarantee of half an hour of fun and “Indiana Jonesy" adventures in the company of extremely agreeable feathered friends. Most of the good old Disney series (mainly the Gummi Bears and Chip ‘n Dale’s Rescue Rangers) were very good, but none of them was nearly as good as Duck Tales. Even despite the fluctuating quality of the episodes. But most of it still works decently today even without a nostalgic prism, let alone with one.

The Old Man and the Sea... Or rather an unendearing old rabbit whose hopping about days are already far behind him and a moth. For when it was made, the technical side is impressive, but for my tastes this is too cheaply sentimental. And it could have been shorter and some sort of ending might have helped. I can’t believe that they couldn’t find a better animated short back in 1998.

Even the second time round the bonus escapade is better than its feature-length sibling. It may not be quite as good as Gone Nutty, but its still great fun. More ideas, jokes and everything in the span of five minutes than in the vast majority of feature-length animated movies these days. Scrat is simply... Simply Scrat. Let’s hope that we meet him again some time and it won’t be in a boring family slap-stick farce like Ice Age: The Meltdown.

A film that will forever remain the film of THAT one scene of the Omaha Beach landing. It’s a shame, because the rest is also excellent.

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! A legendary comedy now. A picture where the result of evaluation is not influenced in any way by nostalgia. Simply because Ghostbusters is somehow timeless. For its time it was technically innovative, had perfect chemistry between the actors, lots of references (not just) to celebrated horrors and mainly it’s a perfect summertime romp that you can repeat over and over and over again.

A total B-movie in all aspects, which tried to cash in on the peaking fame of Transformers and BattleTech toward the end of the eighties. The directing, the technical side and the acting performances (if you can call them that) is all absolutely mediocre. But the battle of Robot Jox doesn’t even pretend to be anything more. It is entertaining and, occasionally, to be honest a bit ridiculous, short and punchy. In its essence, I personally find these clumsy, giant junkers a lot more pleasant than Michael Bay’s rather bland CGI goons seventeen years its junior. Although this is more likely thanks to nostalgia value, working at full throttle in this case, than to quality.

I didn’t like the “independent at all costs" style in which Rebecca Miller approached these portraits. Particularly the over-use of the narrator was downright bothersome. It is cheap and should probably have been made into a radio play. However, Personal Velocity has certain qualities that cannot be denied. While Delia and Greta’s stories are potentially interesting, but boring in form, the portrait of Paula is at least a piece of quality filmmaking, if nothing else. The almost zero use of music was disappointing. All the time I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a variation on The Hours, just several quality levels lower.

“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity... But I know none, and therefore am no beast." Morávek didn’t handle this adaptation of the Shakespeare classic too well. I can’t say it’s actually bad, but it is brought down considerably because it doesn’t work as a unit. Some occasional powerful moments make up for this rather shaky overall product, but paradoxically these are mainly scenes where Pavel Zedníček doesn’t make an appearance. He is the stumbling block for this entire play. Try as he might, he doesn’t manage to convince the viewer by his Richard III even for a second. Which, with a play that focuses primarily on the title role, is bad. Really, really bad. Unfortunately, Richard III is just another in a quickly growing series of badly adapted Shakespeare appearing recently on the Czech stage.

Out of the frying pan, into the fire... Chris Gardner’s life in a nutshell. The Pursuit of Happyness has just three shortcomings, but they are so serious that they make this potentially good movie into a wreck that has nothing to offer. The first is the overly-long running time, then it’s the rather lackadaisical and plodding directing and then the main protagonist. Although Will Smith’s acting is perfect as usual and his character is absolutely convincing. Which, rather paradoxically, is the biggest problem because he plays the most awfully unpleasant central character that the silver screen has ever seen. Sycophantic, incapable of providing for his family, ingratiating, bothersome, selfish, dumb (he has no common sense at all). Simply the kind of guy that everyone would despise. I couldn’t shake the feeling throughout the movie that he does everything just for himself and his son just stumbled randomly into this situation. When I think about how much this is idealized and far from reality, I am surprised that anybody wanted to make a movie about a guy like that. But the truth is that it is a story about reforging the American Dream into reality. Something that we have already seen countless times with protagonists that I felt I could wish all the success in the world to. A sub-average movie with excellent actors and a neat soundtrack. It’s not unbearable, but it’s totally superfluous.